COLLEGE STATION — About a decade before Texas A&M junior tight end Jace Sternberger began showcasing his moves in front of more than 100,000 fans at Kyle Field, he was better known for his smooth moves around Clinton, Okla.

On area dance floors and nursing-home hardwoods.

“I got pretty good at it,” Sternberger said with a chuckle of his inclination for ballroom dancing as a youngster. “I’d go to hospitals, dance for old people … it was like a little ‘Dancing with the Stars’ in Clinton. I took it pretty serious back in the day.”

Much like his blossoming career at A&M, Sternberger crossed paths with ballroom dancing by chance. He said his Oklahoma elementary and intermediate schools were required to have walking programs to promote exercise, and a couple of his renegade instructors tabbed a suitable substitute when he was in the fifth grade.

“My P.E. teacher and music teacher didn’t want to walk, so they taught us how to ballroom dance,” he said. “We trained from August to November, 40 minutes a day, and then in December we performed at the school.”

Sternberger was an unwilling artist at first.

“Back then, I thought it was stupid,” he said. “I hated it.”

These days, he loves the idea his talents include more than catching a ball.

“In today’s world, everybody just kind of knows you for what you do in football,” he said. “There are some athletes who take pride in having other things they can do — things that not a lot of people would associate with football players.”

A&M fans wouldn’t care if Sternberger acted out “The Nutcracker” on University Drive in his spare time if it meant one of the nation’s top tight ends through seven games kept up his superb on-field act.

“Game in and game out, he’s going to get his catches and get his yards,” fellow A&M tight end Trevor Wood said. “When you have a (tight end) like that — it doesn’t happen too often. He’s a playmaker who’s doing playmaker things.”

The No. 16 Aggies (5-2, 3-1 SEC) play at Mississippi State (4-3, 1-3) at 6 p.m. Saturday, and for the first time in years — if ever — an A&M tight end will be a focal point of an opposing defense. Sternberger’s six touchdown catches this year are tied for the most in college football by a tight end and already a single-season school record for the position.

Nearly two weeks ago in the Aggies’ 26-23 victory at South Carolina, Sternberger collected career highs in catches (nine) and receiving yards (145). He also dragged a Gamecocks safety for nearly 25 yards following a catch, making the national highlight reels that day and prompting an amusing text message from a friend afterward.

“Did you make him pay for the Uber?” Sternberger said it read.

He’s making opponents pay week in and week out at a position that almost was nonexistent a year ago at A&M. But in November the Aggies fired Kevin Sumlin and replaced him with Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher, who installed tight ends and a fullback in the offense.

One of the results has been A&M’s leading the SEC and all Power Five schools in possession time (36:39 to 23:61) thanks to a more punishing approach, with Sternberger leading all Aggies receivers in catches (29), receiving yards (496) and touchdown catches, those six being three times as many as any other A&M receiver has.

“He has the ability to go inside or outside,” Fisher said of Sternberger’s versatility. “He’s getting better at blocking, and people can’t say he’s just a receiving tight end.”

Sternberger (6-4, 250) began his college career at Kansas out of Kingfisher High in Oklahoma, and when the Jayhawks diminished the role of tight end, he transferred to Northeastern Oklahoma A&M Community College last year.

Following Fisher’s hire from FSU in early December, the Aggies began recruiting Sternberger, just as the Seminoles had when then-FSU (and now A&M) receivers coach Dameyune Craig told Fisher he needed to go after the former Jayhawk, who’d been a two-star recruit out of high school.

“We want to judge them when they’re 18, (but) they change when they’re 19, 20, 21 and sometimes get better,” Fisher said early in the season of Sternberger’s budding talent.

As for his longtime ballroom dancing skill that he said hasn’t diminished one bit?

“It’s one of those things I keep in my back pocket,” he said with a smile. “So if I ever need to, I can use it.”

Brent Zwerneman is a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle and chron.com covering Texas A&M athletics. He is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Sam Houston State University, where he played baseball.

Brent is the author of four published books about Texas A&M, three related to A&M athletics. He’s a four-time winner of APSE National Top 10 writing awards for the San Antonio Express-News, including a second-place finish for breaking the Dennis Franchione “secret newsletter” scandal in 2007.

His coverage of Texas A&M’s move to the SEC from the Big 12 also netted a third-place finish nationally in 2012. Brent met his wife, KBTX-TV news anchor Crystal Galny, in the Dixie Chicken before an A&M-Texas Tech football game in 2002, and the couple has three children: Will, Zoe and Brady.